French novelist Dominique Lapierre called his 1985 novel set in KolkataThe City of Joy. Not merely a flight of Gallic snarkiness, the title is a translation of “Anand Nagar,” the name of one of the city’s worst slums. So-called by an earlier 20th-century jute mill owner in a moment of bucolic wishful thinking for the workers he had established on the site, Anand Nagar metastasized into a basti, or shantytown.

It has since evolved little. Multi-story dwellings of dubious provenance now serrate the skyline but the grinding poverty and paucity of basic services like electricity remain the same. The stagnation of the “City of Joy” is all the more striking in comparison to other regions of Kolkata. Like many Indian cities, the former Calcutta still lugs much of the baggage left by British colonialism as it modernizes, leading to wide disparities in quality of life.

Fashioned by the colonial British in the manner of a grand European capital—yet now set in one of the poorest and most overpopulated regions of India—Kolkata has grown into a city of sharp contrasts and contradictions. Kolkata has had to assimilate strong European influences and overcome the limitations of its colonial legacy in order to find its own unique identity. In the process it created an amalgam of East and West that found its expression in the life and works of the 19th-century Bengali elite and its most noteworthy figure, the poet and mystic Rabindranath Tagore.

This large and vibrant Indian city thrives amid seemingly insurmountable economic, social, and political problems. Its citizens exhibit a great joie de vivre that is demonstrated in a penchant for art and culture and a high level of intellectual vitality and political awareness. Crowds throng to Kolkata’s book fairs, art exhibitions, and concerts, and there is a lively trading of polemics on walls, which has led to Kolkata being dubbed the “city of posters.”

Lake at the Indian Botanic Garden, Kolkata. Latika Das.

Yet for all of Kolkata’s vitality, many of the city’s residents live in some of the worst conditions, far removed from the cultural milieu. The city’s energy nevertheless penetrates even to the poorest areas, as a large number of Kolkatans sincerely support the efforts of those who minister to the underprivileged.

In short, Kolkata remains an enigma to many Indians as well as to foreigners. It continues to puzzle newcomers and to arouse an abiding nostalgia in the minds of those who have lived there.